40 Responses to “Bucs Really Want To Keep Michael Bennett”

Bennet has a lot of upside IMO. He’s got the motor of Roy Miller, only he actually makes plays. Last year was his best year, 4 sacks and a handful of tackles. I bet a lot of that had to do with our now former line coaches…

So, with those coaches gone and a whole new regime in place, we’ll see if he continues to grow. DL is definitely not a weakness on this team (cue 2.2 in 3… 2… 1…)

No more Mario Williams pleas, please. DE is a strong point on our team. Williams rookie year 4.5, Clayborn has him beat and Bowers, pre-injury, was the next phenom at DE. Having Bennett is fantastic to cycle in. Where does Williams fit in.

Also, I am not over impressed with Williams. Why does he deserve a monster contract? Sack totals to date by season: 4.5, 14, 12, 9, 8.5, 5. The 14 and 12 sack years were nice, but he has never been this superstar sack monster people want him to be.

Bennett’s a damn good football player. I don’t think we’re done adding pieces to that D-Line either, I’d look for them to bring in at least one more good developmental D-End and Probably more depth at D-Tackle too.

I think that you could make an argument that Bennett was the best player on the D Line last year – Schiano sees that.

Bowers and Clay may have more upside, but we have seen what upside means from Games Missed Constantly – nothing.

I completely agree that we need to bring another D Tackle, you could draft one in rounds 3-5 or sign a second tier fa and that player would compete favorably against Games Missed and outplay Roy Miller.

Price is impressive when he is on the field, which is not too often. I am very encouraged by the young d ends.

Not only am I happy that Bennett will be back, I hope we can extend his contract for longer than that. Everyone seems to like Bennett, he had the most sacks of his career last year starting for the first time ever, and he was one of ProFootballFocus’s best DE against the run.

Lets go out and add a Jason Jones from the Titans. He is an undersized tackle that was moved to DE last year and really struggled. I would like to see him push McCoy and Price, to be honest if we got him he would probably start next to McCoy, which I have not problem with. A DT rotation of McCoy, Price, Jones, Miller/new addition, and a DE rotation of Clayborn, Bowers, Bennett, Crowder/new addition, I would be happy with.

Good, in today’s NFL, you need multiple pass rushers, to keep the line Fresh and rested. Bennett and Crowder are young and talented. Make good backups to Clayborn and Bowers.

And jonny3.3- if you were referring to me- then you are an idiot. I said , if healthy, Bowers will start. Period. Bennett wasn’t very impressive as a starter- no one will sign him

But if you believe, for one minute, that an NFL team will let their second round pick sit on the bench, to start an unsigned FA pickup- then you know nothing about the NFL! If he’s healthy- its always been Bowers job- that’s why they spent a second round pick, and a boat load of money on him.

Draft picks ALWAYS get the preferential treatment

If you really don’t know that, then you should take your 2 main posting fingers, sit on them, and massage your Brain until they post the starters in July. Then it will all be clear to you.

Capt Tim, we had our differences, but I am getting on board with your train of thought more and more. I might argue with people on these boards, but I respect 90% of the people’s opinions that post on here.

Draft picks typically get preferential treatment; however, a change of regimes typically causes the new regime to have A LOT less difficulty taking a UFA or lower draftee than the regime that drafted the player.

We are in a hybrid situation here. Schiano could care less about the dumb draft decisions made by the stooges rah and Dom. Dom obviously feels very vulnerable to being made to look more foolish than he already does – if for example, Schiano demotes highly invested rahdom players and promotes his own guys UFAs, draftees etc.

Bennett was not horrible, he was very good. I think Bowers has greater potential and his play was encouraging so it is Bowers’ job to lose – but Bennett plays the run very well.

There is not a player on our d line who is a good pass rush yet, clay seems to be the closest bc of his motor but he needs to broaden his game. Bowers has plus athleticism if healthy. Price has good strength and push. GMC is a pass rush disaster unless he gets a perfectly clean get-off – which happens about twice per season.

Dan Sileo is such a tool. I was listening to him rant this morning about Bennett getting a tender worth 2+ mil and calling him ‘Tony Bennett’ and saying things like “Who is he??? Did he even start last year??” If he doesn’t think Bennett is worth 8 mil over 4 years at 2 mil a year then he’s clueless. Bennett has a ton of upside and showed great flashes last year. I think with the right coaching he will be outstanding. There will be no let up when Bowers goes out and Bennett goes in.

So..I guess the 6 million they offered to Chip Kelly was just a smoke screen so they could go cheap. They had that all worked out..”Hey Chip…we’re gonna offer you a butt load of money because our fans think we’re cheap. I want you to accept the offer and then bail at the last minute OK? That way we can go out and hire the Rutgers coach for a lot less.”

Sometimes the cheap Glazers comments just seem stupid. I know they haven’t spent a lot of money in the years since the super bowl but to say this coaching hire was made to save money after all the coaches they pursued and were blocked from pursuing is just plain ignorant. Not only that, how do you know this is the cheapest coaching staff in the NFL? Have the salaries been released to compare to other rosters?? I don’t think Sullivan came cheap. I doubt whether Bostad came for chump change. Wait.. I get it. We didn’t land Billick or Cowher so they HAVE to be cheap.
Sorry…I forgot that old tired mantra.

Remember waaaay back, over the last 4 weeks. Thru out the staff hiring process- it was reported by several national publications that coaches were turned off by the Bucs offers! They mentioned cheap salaries, poor benefits, bad signing Packages.

Remember?

I didn’t see Chip Kelly’s contract. Neither did you. It may have been 6 mil- yet As hard as it is for most people to believe- it could still be a bad contract. There are a lot of perks added to contracts.

It is a bad sign , when an assistant not only turns a team down- but feels the need to leak to the press that the offer was insulting.

Neither of us know what the offers to others were. We know we have the lowest paid head coach – outta 32

Does that make him a bad coach? Absolutely not.
Does it mean he will fail- not at all
But he has no NFL experience, and has inherited the youngest team in the league. Biiiiiig challenge

I want him to succeed. But aren’t you tired of this team being the cheapest for EVERYTHING??

No, I don’t remember any national publication ‘quoting’ anybody. There may have been some ‘anonymous’ source who stated something but all I remember is that every time someone turned us down it was the fans who speculated it was over money. I don’t remember anyone coming out and saying the contract was insulting or anything. Can you post any links??

I personally don’t have a problem with them not paying Schiano a tub of money. I’m sure he didn’t expect it. Now if he proves that he can win in the NFL I”m sure that will change but it’s just smart business to not pour a lot of money into an unproven commodity. Having said that, they are getting more money than we’ll ever see in our lifetime so it’s not like he’s living in a trailer.
How would spending more money have gotten us any different results in the coaching search?? I just don’t see the correlation from the reports I’ve read. People can specualte all they want but unless someone who was offered a contract comes out and says it was insulting…I’d take ‘anonymous’ sources with a grain of salt.

@Capt Tim. I wholeheartedly agree that the fans deserve a sports franchise that is actually trying to win. I really believe it’s just a case of the Glazer’s getting caught with their pants down. I don’t blame them for not being big players in FA in 2011 because the team had just come off a 10-6 season that could have very easily been 12-4 if we could have pulled out the Atlanta games. Things seemed to be going in the right direction and they gambled on the draft filling in the blanks on the DE’s. Well, we know how that all worked out.

Now they are faced with the prospect of a total fan revolt if they don’t show they are serious about putting a good product on the field. I don’t see them trying to go cheap so far this year. I don’t think the Schiano hire was who they wanted but I believe they thought it was better than Sherman or Marty and I would have to agree. He seems to have the endorsement of the majority of the pundits and certainly has all the tools to be successful. No, there is no guarantee but I choose to be optimistic about the possibilities instead of pessimistic.

Once FA hits we’ll see how serious they really are. I’m not in the camp who expects them to sign every marquee player that hits the market. That’s unrealistic and they don’t have to do that to show me they are serious. I do expect 2 splash signings and then they can fill the rest of the holes with mid level FA’s and the draft. We need depth worse than anything. We saw what happened when McCoy went down and there was no replacement of any quality. Same with Grimm. We don’t need to go out and sign all starters but a starting CB and MLB would be a good start.

@ Thomas….no one knows how good or bad Schiano is going to be. The odds are stacked against him but there is just something about this guy that makes me believe that he can turn this thing around. Only time will tell.

Rah is not coach anymore so can we move on? You’re gonna have to eat enough crow when GMC tears the league up next year so make sure you have a healthy appetite. :>)